On one evening I attended the Miami Open with a friend and his colleague. We bought tickets for a Tuesday night session hoping to see the Federer/Del Potro match but alas they made that match a daytime match instead.

Parking is at a premium in Key Biscayne thus we actually had to park a few islands back and take s shuttle bus over to the event. All in all it wasn’t too bad but there is quite a bit of traffic as you closer to the event.

We arrived just in time for the first match on the main stadium starting at 7pm. The number 1 seed in the tournament was Stan Wawrinka and so we got to see him play Tunisian Malek Jaziri in a 3rd round match.

We had decent seats on the 300 level that cost about $100/per person. We were in the second row of that level. Continue reading →

My family had a great five night stay at Turnberry Isle Miami. We arrived on a Sunday night and were greeted by a member of the valet staff with a “welcome back”. Whoops! The only problem was this was our first time ever being at the property. The bell staff came over and got everything situated. They grabbed our bags and got our name and escorted us over to the checkin area.

Turnberry Isle driveway entrance

Turnberry Isle front entrance

The entrance way was impressive and falls in line with a high end resort. Directly across from the front desk was a water feature with plenty of koi fish. Every morning at 8am they feed the koi and guests are invited for that event however we never made it over during our stay.

Turnberrry Isle pond

Koi fish at Turnberry Isle pond

Once we arrived at the checkin desk we were helped right away by a courteous female front desk agent. She mentioned we received an “upgrade” but Continue reading →

I had a Category 8 Marriott Travel Package voucher good for a five night stay that we didn’t use in 2016. I called at the end of last year to extend it and Marriott was willing to extend the certificate for another year (Thanks Marriott! To see how we obtained this certificate read this post). I told my wife to look at some of the Category 8 Marriott properties and we narrowed it down to 2-3 properties. In the end it was between Phoenix and Miami (we ruled out Hawaii due to lap child flight time) due to the shorter flight times but the under three hour flight to Miami won out. And so, we decided a week at Turnberry Isle in Miami would be a perfect fit for us to escape the never ending Wisconsin winter.

In-flight air show displaying our routing to Fort Lauderdale’s airport

I decided to book Sunday night flight outbound and Friday night flight inbound so that we could enjoy our weekends at home and get some stuff done before having to go right back to work. Our flights were 100% full both ways and they were actually Continue reading →